Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest and it’s impact on long term quality of life for patients after aortic surgery

To evaluate the possible effect of aortic surgery with DHCA on patients’ long term quality of life in a retrospective crossectional study. From January 2019 to December 2020 24 patients had undergone aortic surgery requiring DHCA in a tertiary hospital, 7 of those were excluded because of intrahospital death. For the rest of the patients quality of life (QOF) was evaluated using RAND SF36 questionnaire and MMSE test. Patient data and clinical characteristics were collected and analysed with IBM SPSS, a P value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. Of the 17 patients included in the study, 12 (71%) were men and 5 (29%) were women. Their mean age 60,71±13,8 years. Leading co-morbidity was PAH (64.7%). There were 6 (35.3%) elective and 11 (64,7%) emergency cases. Mostly there was Stanford A dissection(82.4%). 94.7% had aortic arch replacement. Most common postoperative complication was infection- 29.4%. The mean cardiopulmonary bypass time, aortal obstruction and reperfusion time was 212±38,3, 124±33.8 and 70,2±32,9 minutes, respectively. Core temperature during DHCA was 23,2±3,2. Rewarming rate was 0,12±0,07 C/min. No statistically significance between QOL and lowest DHCA temperature (p0.059), Ao (p0,544), reperfusion time (p0,618), CPB time (p0.305) was observed. QOL and rewarming rate showed statistical significance (p0,02) Mean long term quality of life was 71.9±10.2% and mean cognitive 27.9±5,3. There was no statistical significance between lower quality of life and average temperature, Ao, CPB DHCA duration(p>0.05). Only rewarming time was found to be correlating with QOL. Compared to other studies QOL was the same or higher, but compared to general population QOL is slightly decreased.